Ok, so its been a while since I posted on the build up of the sacred Tiki Mt. Unbangee.... But there has been progress. The backyard is now plumbed for gas, water, power, etherenet and cable TV. COOL. Lots more cement has gone in and the plants have gotten revamped... but the best part is I got to spend all day working on the VOLCANO !!!

I framed up the buck from 3/8ths ply, looking back I would probably go a little thicker but its what I had on hand so its fine. It used up 3 sheets. The next step will be to cover the framework with chicken wire and then cover with burlap. The whole thing then gets a coating of spray on cement (Spray-Top by brand name). This will allow me to mix in colors and stains as it goes on. COOL. I'll put in a couple of "vents" that will have tubes leading down to a fog machine for periodic bursts of smoke.

After I got done framing up the buck, I put a couple coats of Thompsons Waterseal on it and set it aside to dry. The wood will be covered but parts of bare wood will be touching the ground and this will be a year around outdoor fixture. The Thompsons will not completely prevent rot, but hopefully it will slow it down. Once that was done I rigged up the gas and power.

Pretty simple really. Get black gas piping from Home Depot. Use lots of yellow teflon tape and pipe wrench to assemble, plug in the Fire Pit kit from Yardiac, connect to power and WOW... instant glosing fire from the heart of the mystic Mt. Ubangee.

The flames are hot enough close to the fire pit that I will line the mouth of the volcano with automotive exhuast pipe wrap before I spray on the concrete, but thats no big deal.

lots more the report... but I'm whipped. here are a couple of pics. More to come.

here is the "skeleton" of Ubangee. I just cut non matching wavey patterns on the outside edge of the plywood legs, screwed them to a ring on top and a larger ring on bottom. I then put a couple LIBERAL coats of Thompsons Water Seal on it to try and offer a little but of rot resistance to the wood.

I then covered the sides with chicken wire and burlap (sorry, dont have pics of this stage). I just construction staple gunned them to the wood. Shaping the chicken wire as I went to give it a little bit of a "volcanoey" look. The burlap was then covered with a matting, and I cant quite remember the name of the product right now... will look it up and post it.. but its a cement absorbent batting looking stuff. Over this a first coat of epoxy cement was used as a base. Think of this as a "primer" coat.

after this we mixed up some "Spray Top" first a little thin to serve as a harder base coat.
Danny mixing while Lonny "supervises"

all of us applying the "base" coat

then we mixed up a thicker batch to act as a texture coat. We troweled this on in "artistic" fashion to give some texture... again, trying to make it look "volcanoey"
and the results

let all that dry overnight and then start staining. We used a variety of acid stains and straight up concrete stains. Some give BRIGHT colors, others stain everything under it (unlike other stains that are more like paint and just cover the underlying colors). We just went to town until it looked good.
here is the 1st stain we used...

looking into the mouth of the beast... I had to trim away some of the material and let the fire box sit a little above the opening in the mouth (it doesnt poke out above the rim of the "caldera" though. Before I put on the cement I lined the whole mouth area with exhaust header wrap (available at your local hot rod shop) for a little bit of fire resistance. This area does get pretty hot. But its held up fine through years of use and has caught fire... yet . Will post up some pics of the area as it is in service.

will get some pics of Mt. Ubangee a couple of years in... the Banana trees are MUCH larger and we've done some more landscaping in the area. LOTS more to do though, and right not the area hasnt been tended to in a while, so its not the prettiest... but it will give ya'll an idea of how this kind of thing holds up... which is VERY well.

for added effect I put a halloween fogger in the base of the mountain (its all hollow underneath) and set it to go off every so often... the fog leaks out around the base of the mountain and fills the area behind the volcano on still nights. Throw a red back light in there and it looks REAL nice.

On 2010-10-11 18:15, MadDogMike wrote:Looks great! What did you use for a burner set-up?

Sound FX - I made a volcano sound effect a few years back by taking an explosion wav file and slowing it down by 4x or so. Then ran it thru an amplified sub-woofer, it made the ground shake

They have cheap fog machines at WalMart now for $20. I'm sure they aren't as good as a $100 one, but you can buy 5 of them for $100

for the burner I used the guts from the firepit I got at Garden.com. It wasnt cheap... ~$800 if I recall correctly. But then again I didnt see this as an area to skimp on the project. It has electronic ignition and a thermocoupler that will try for a set period of time to re-ignite the flames should they go out for whatever reason, after that it shuts down and shuts off the gas. When you turn on the power to it the ignition system kicks on and instant flame. Pretty cool. It also means it can be controlled (on and off wise) via a remote switch, or even better, remote control (putting a remote control receiver inline with the power supply).

Will look into the SFX option. The slowed down explosion is a good idea. A friend is pretty heavy into the "haunt" business and I should be bale to come up with good little sound players that can be hidden in the base of the volcano and play back sound files.

Headed to Walmart today to pick up a couple of cheap foggers. Ubangee will smoke again soon!!!